It was argued that PICO may be useful for every scientific endeavor even beyond clinical settings.9 This proposal is based on a more abstract view of the PICO mnemonic, equating them with four components that is inherent to every single research, namely (1) research object; (2) application of a theory or method; (3) alternative theories or methods (or the null hypothesis); and (4) the ultimate goal of knowledge generation.
This proposition would imply that the PICO technique could be used for teaching academic writing even beyond medical disciplines.
Clinical question: "In children with headache, is paracetamol more effective than placebo against pain?"
Pubmed (health research database) search strategy:children headache paracetamol placebo pain
Clinical question: "Is the risk of having breast cancer higher in symptom-free women with a positive mammography compared to symptom-free women with a negative mammography?"10
The PICO framework was originally developed to frame interventional clinical questions. PICO inspired other frameworks such as PICOS, PICOT, PICOTT, PECO, PICOTS, PECODR, PEICOIS, PICOC, SPICE, PIPOH, EPICOT+, PESICO, PICo, and PS.11
Huang X, Lin J, Demner-Fushman D (2006). "Evaluation of PICO as a knowledge representation for clinical questions" (PDF). AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2006: 359–63. PMC 1839740. PMID 17238363. http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/publications/Huang_etal_AMIA2006.pdf ↩
Nishikawa-Pacher, Andreas (2022). "Research Questions with PICO: A Universal Mnemonic". Publications. 10 (3): 21. doi:10.3390/publications10030021. eISSN 2304-6775. https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fpublications10030021 ↩
Schardt C, Adams MB, Owens T, Keitz S, Fontelo P (2007). "Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions". BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 7: 16. doi:10.1186/1472-6947-7-16. PMC 1904193. PMID 17573961. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1904193 ↩
"Asking a Good Question (PICO)". 17 November 2004. Archived from the original on 2011-02-26. Retrieved 2010-05-18. https://web.archive.org/web/20110226210556/http://www.usc.edu/hsc/ebnet/ebframe/PICO.htm ↩
Richardson, WS (1995). "The well-built clinical question: a key to evidence based-decisions". ACP Journal Club. 123, 3 (3): A12 – A13. doi:10.7326/ACPJC-1995-123-3-A12. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩
"Systematic Review Methods". Chapter 2. Systematic Review Methods -- AHRQ Technical Reviews and Summaries -- NCBI Bookshelf. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US). March 2009. Retrieved 2010-05-18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=hstechrev&part=A29867 ↩
Luijendijk HJ (2021). "How to PICO questions about medical tests". BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. 26 (4): 155–157. doi:10.1136/bmjebm-2021-111676. PMC 8311106. PMID 33789913. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8311106 ↩
Shokraneh, Farhad (2019). "PICO Framework: Two Decades of Variation and Application". F1000Research. 8: 1419. doi:10.7490/f1000research.1117334.1. https://doi.org/10.7490%2Ff1000research.1117334.1 ↩